False Dawn (33 page)

The lake was small and L-shaped, having a few vacation cabins on part of it, the wreckage of a campground and boathouse near a collapsed country store. In the blue moonlight, Evan could see that there were a few buildings standing on the far side of the lake, and amazingly, three or four fruit trees with stunted apples still hanging on spindly limbs.

“I want to go home. I want to go home,” Thea kept insisting, her voice like a child’s. “Who cares about spooky old Mr. Thompson’s survival practice anyway? I want to go home.”

Evan turned back to her, feeling helpless, feeling worn out, feeling angry. “All right, Thea,” he croaked, his voice nearly gone from fatigue. “We’re home.”

She looked dazedly around. “Not here. Not here, home. Home. Camminsky Creek. Don’t you know where that is? Mister?” Her face lost expression and there were tears on her cheeks. “I don’t know where it is, either. I can’t it…Help me, mister…I’m lost…” Her words trailed off into sobs.

Irritated, Evan took the first cabin he came to that still had a roof. It was a small A-frame with a sagging floor, and the smell told him several animals had used it before now. But anything was better than standing up on aching hips and knees, being harnessed to the sledge, listening to Thea, soaking from the rain. Leaving the sledge outside he made a quick, sleepy survey of the place, and finding it passably sound, he looked for some light.

In the kitchen he found a few candles and set them up in the three lower rooms for the little light they could give. Chipmunks and other small rodents had destroyed most of the furniture but the stove, for although it was a little rusty, was still sound, and its chimney was intact. He decided the house would do for the night.

Making a last effort, he pulled the sledge inside, then jammed the door closed behind it. He reached for a can and a pot, then stumbled into the kitchen to start a fire. He had to eat. He needed to get something hot into him. Then, once he was dry, he would take care of Thea.

He woke the next morning still seated at the kitchen table, his head by his plate of half-eaten supper. For a moment he thought he was back at Squaw Valley, that the rest had been an unpleasant dream, one born of apprehension and eroding hope. Then he touched his leg and found the sore place where the bullet had creased it.

“Thea.” He said it aloud, getting to his feet and shaking his head to clear the sleep from it. He went to the sink but the taps didn’t work, and no water rushed out. Swearing now, he turned and stumbled into the living room, fear like ice in his vitals. “Thea…”

There was the sledge, where he had left it, and Thea lay in it. Her face was very pale and quiet, framed by the still-damp tendrils of her dark hair touched with white. There was no sign of the pain that had racked her for the last several days. A curious half-smile lit her cracked lips, as if she had a secret all her own. One hand dangled listlessly over the side of the sledge, pale as milk but for the skinned knuckles.

“Dear God; dear fucking God,” Evan whispered. Not noticing the tears that filled his eyes, he flung himself across the room to her side, grasping the pathetic little hand in his, holding it against his wet face, his mouth pressed against it to stop the sounds he made.

The hand was cool against his skin, and it was not for some minutes that he realized it wasn’t stiff, and that she was breathing—shallowly but breathing. Then the slender fingers curled weakly around his beard and her faint voice said, “Evan…Let me…stay…”

Jumbled words of relief choked him. He pulled her to him, his head pressed against her body. He felt the life in her. He did not care when he cried.

Looking up at her he saw for the first time the glory of her smile. Softly she touched his hair, his eyes, with her cool hand. “I do love you, Evan,” she said. As his arms tightened around her, she closed her eyes and slept.

The day after they found a larger, more secure house at the far end of the lake, behind the store, slightly concealed. The plumbing there had been destroyed by the earth tremor, but the building was more sound and better insulated than the A-frame was. It was the best place to live at Lake Kirkwood.

Over her protests, Evan carried Thea down to the new house, saying that she was not fully recovered and he would take no chances with her. He had come too close to losing her and would not risk it again. He ceremoniously installed her in the largest bed she had ever seen and wrapped her in four layers of blankets while she laughed.

“But your leg was hurt,” she reminded him when he was satisfied with the cocoon he had made her. “You were shot, weren’t you? Didn’t you have a wound in your thigh?”

“A scratch,” he said, waving his hand to dismiss it. “You had me so very frightened, Thea.” His voice dropped as he spoke.

“But I made it. I’m still alive. Don’t underestimate me, Evan.” She pulled the covers back from her shoulder and watched him as he moved around the room, pointing out its wonders. “And,” he added when he had finished describing the closets and the chest of drawers, “there is an added bonus: three trunks with clothes, mostly for winter. We’re in luck.”

“What about food? Are we in luck there, too?” She knew that they had been on short rations for the whole time since her fever had broken, and the chill in the air told her that they would not have a chance to grow a crop of vegetables before winter; the volcano had stolen the summer from them.

“I’ve looked in the store, of course,” he began evasively. “And there’s a few things in the houses. Canned goods, mostly, beans and rice in sealed cannisters, and some dried fruits.”

“But,” she said, looking at him seriously.

He considered her for a moment, uncertain what to tell her, trying to judge how much she had recovered and what she could bear to know.

She saw this and said, “I am not a child, Evan. If there is trouble, I have a right to know.”

He nodded. “All right: there’s trouble. We’ve lost most of the stores we had. Don’t ask me how. It happened, and that’s all that matters. There are some things we can eat here, hut not very much; maybe two months’ worth of food. Not enough to get us through the winter.”

“I think the winter will be long,” she said as she regarded him with her steady dark eyes.

“Probably,” he admitted. “We can trap, and we still have our crossbows, so we can hunt. I’ve found a couple guns here, and we can make more crossbows if we need to. I’ll try hunting in a couple of days, when you’re better.”

“You mean that we can hunt but there might not be anything to kill?” She twisted in the bed to watch him more closely

“Yes. That’s what I mean—you wanted to know.”

There was silence in the room, then she asked, “Do you think we can grow anything? Can we make a greenhouse or something? There’s wood and glass, so maybe we can.”

“We can try. If not now, in the spring.” There was a false note of optimism to these words, and he looked out the window as he spoke, seeing the rocks and cold that made a lie of his assurances.

She nodded. “I see. Well, I’ll do what I can.” She did not speak of the anxiety that preyed on her, a worry that grew deeper each day as her wounded shoulder healed—healed without strength, without sensation returning to her right hand.

The first snow came early, scarcely a flurry on the mid- October wind. It tapped at the mountains and clung to the hollows for a day and then was gone. But it left certainty and fear behind. In its wake would come winter, a winter colored by the fires of a volcano and the deadly rain that was steadily killing off the scrub that had grown where the first had burned away, Each day that it rained the brush shriveled, dried up, and the few animals living where the brush had died, died with it.

Evan had found some seeds, long past their season dates on their packages, but Thea had taken them with good spirit, sticking with winter crops of brussels sprouts, onions, cabbages, and cauliflower. She had marked out the plots and with untutored hands set the seeds, surrounding the area with wide glass panes that would shelter and warm the seedlings. She tended this unpromising garden zealously and was rewarded with the most spindly of sprouts that poked unwillingly from the earth long enough to raise her hopes, then reddened, twisted, and wilted.

“Maybe they’re too old,” Evan said by way of consolation as he worked on stout wooden barricades at the entrance to the little valley. “They were dated for the nineties, and that’s more than fifteen years ago.”

“But they’re all we have,” she objected. “I think I’d better dig up the ground again, and see if I can make a better greenhouse.”

“If that’s what you want, there’re other envelopes. Maybe you’re right and some of the plants will grow.” By tacit agreement he did not ask about her hand. He knew how wretched she felt about her continued weakness and three numb fingers.

“I’ve got to try, Evan. I’ll make a real greenhouse, and then we’ll see.”

“Fine.” As he said it, he planned how to cut down their food once again.

When the next snow came, it stayed longer, frosting the mountains and chilling the lake. Now the nights were sharp with ice and packs of starving dogs howled in the dying forests. There were no sounds of engines on the roads, and no signs of tire tracks.

Although the fruit was bitter, Evan and Thea ate all the hard, tiny apples that grew on the trees, relishing them as rare and sweet until at last they were gone. After that their hunger was worse. Their stores dwindles down to rice and a small trove of Japanese noodle soups that they found in the broom closet of the store. Lake Kirkwood had little to offer them: here there was no miner’s lettuce, no watercress, no berries trailing their sharp vines through the underbrush, no wild currants, no grapes. If there had been fish in the lake, there were none now and the cold grew deeper every day.

One night, soon after the third snowfall, Thea turned to Evan as he lay beside her, half asleep. “Evan?”

“Um?”

“What will happen to us here? Won’t we starve? What if we go south? Can’t we get out of the mountains onto the desert? If it’s this cold here, we might be able to get by on the desert. We could raise things if it were warmer. You said yourself that it’s getting colder.”

“We might go south,” he agreed languidly, fingering her breast scar, which had recently turned a tawny color like his regenerated arm. He gave her a bemused smile. “It’s catching, whatever it is.”

“I know. My father thought the defective kids and the regeneration were all part of the same thing, all tied together somehow. He thought it might be a virus that changed.” She returned to her first question. “Evan, why don’t we go there? What’s wrong with the desert?”

“We can go, love, but what for? It won’t be any easier to survive out there than here.” “Why?” Evan took a little time to frame his answer. “Because if the rain falling here is poisoned, the rain falling there and everywhere else is poisoned too.” He was staring up at the ceiling, thinking of the cream-colored, deadly snow that was falling, falling above them, around them.

She tugged at his beard, which was now almost entirely white. “What if there were just one of us, then, could you make it through the winter?”

“Stop talking nonsense,” he said, folding his arms around her.

“No, Evan, I’m trying to figure something out.”

He sighed. “All right. Could one of us last through the winter? I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. It’s better here with you than out on the desert or anywhere else alone.”

She moved impatiently. Turning close to him, she said, “Evan, promise me you’ll think about the desert. Please. It might be better there. If we’re going to leave, we’ll have to do it soon, before the snow is too deep for us to get through.”

“All right, I’ll think about it.” But the idea drifted from his mind and soon as he was asleep.

At first light he turned over, his arm stretched out to touch her, and he found nothing but her pillow. Surprised but not alarmed he felt the covers, and was startled at how cool they were. He got out of bed into the cold morning: there had been many times when Thea had got up before him, going to check their eternally empty traps or to bring in kindling for the fire. But she had been gone much too long for that if the sheets were any indication. He dressed quickly and went into the living room, calling her name.

There was no response.

Puzzled, he tugged on his boots and stepped out into the pallid morning. Snow clouds scudded over the sky and the smell of the air promised they would release their frozen burden by nightfall. Looking at the white ground he could see her tracks leading away from the house, toward the barricade and the highway beyond.

In sudden fear he went to check their storage closet. Her pack was gone, and her cross-country parka with the fur-lined hood. And he remembered then what she had said the night before, about one of them being able to make it through the winter alone. One, but not two. He closed his eyes convulsively and cursed himself. He had been blind, stupid and blind. He grabbed one of the crossbows from the closet and hurled it across the room, smiling as the window smashed.

An hour later he had packed his things and closed the house without regret. Then he set out, following her tracks through the crisp snow.

There were wisps of a storm in the wind when he finally caught sight of her that afternoon, on the trail south of Tragedy Spring, one that led to the southeast through the heart of the Sierra to the high deserts of Nevada. She was trudging steadily about half a mile ahead of him. She walked as if she were tired, as if her feet were reluctant to take her away.

“Thea!” he shouted, cupping his hands to his mouth and seeing his breath make a fog in the first white swirls that drifted out of the sky.

She hesitated but did not turn.

“Thea!”

This time she stopped, her back sagging at her name.

He increased his stride and came up to her several minutes later. Gripping her shoulder, he turned her to him. “Just what do you think you are doing? Shit, Thea, you can’t last long out here alone.” His hands tightened. “Well?”

She avoided his eyes. “Why did you follow me? Why didn’t you stay there?” She faced him then. “I want you to live, Evan.” “I want that for you, too.” She stared past him toward the blanched horizon. “Look at me. I’m barren as this world. I’m used up. My arm doesn’t work right. There is nothing left for me.”